Source:  https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/ehs6yb/what_not_to_do_when_starting_a_channel/ 

I have been posting a few things on this site for a little while and although my stance is very clear on the whole subject, I continuously get asked if I will “Sub4Sub”.

Please let me explain to you why you should not ever get mixed up in the whole “Sub4Sub” illusion.

As many of you already understand and avoid this, please bare in mind many people still think this is the way to grow a Channel so please excuse me if you are reading this and it doesn’t apply to you.

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The most severe case I’ve seen on YouTube so far was a Channel with 35,000 Subscribers, hitting 90-110 Views per video.

Myself, at the time was hitting 175-185 Views per video at 250 Subscribers.

People who Subscribe to your Channel just to get you to Subscribe back will never watch your videos, engage in anyway or help you grow. They have a very negative impact, giving you the illusion your Channel is growing yet your engagement % and View count doesn’t seem to be reflecting how many Subscribers you have.

So you do what most YouTubers do when troubleshooting whats going wrong, you check out the analytics, where once again, due to the people “Subscribing” to you, the analytics are skewed.

A few months down the line your Subscriber count drops over night… this has you worried, WTF has happened? – YouTube regularly removes Subscriptions to Channels when said Subscriber does not view the content or engage, is a dummy account or is completely inactive. – This can be very disheartening i’m sure and I see many of you on here asking why you’ve lost 50% of your Subscribers and why your views are only 1-3% of your Subscriber count (as an example).

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Please do not engage with “Sub4Sub” requests. – I completely understand that its absolutely awesome to see that Subscriber count go up but if they are what I call “Empty Subs” it’s nothing but a fake number.

Genuine content creators let the Subscribers come naturally.

Those who only care about numbers jump into the “Sub4Sub” posts.

I’m very happy to say after the recent wave inactive removals by YouTube I didn’t lose a single Subscriber as I rejected any offers of “Sub4Sub” and if I did lose Subscribers, I would be very happy that YouTube wiped away the inactives and left me with the real number of fans I have to create for and removes any incorrect data from my analytics.

What are your thoughts, should you Subscribe to someones Channel just to get them to Subscribe to yours?